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Perelandra (Voyage to Venus) by C.S. Lewis
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 11:22 PM "Then came the blessed relief. He suddenly realised that he did not know what he could do. He almost laughed with joy. All this horror had been premature. No definite task was before him. All that was being demanded of him was a general and preliminary resolution to oppose the Enemy in any mode which circumstances might show to be desirable: in fact - and he flew back to the comforting words as a child flies back to its mother's arms - 'to do his best' - or rather, to go on doing his best, for he had already been doing it all along. "What bugbears we make of things unecessarily!" he murmured, settling himself in a slightly more comfortable position. A mild flood of what appeared to him to be more cheerful and rational piety rose and engulfed him." (Chapter Eleven) All those booklets that proselytising Christians hand out to people on the streets often, apart from trying to expound the message of salvation through Christ (complete with the funny cryptic diagrams), also says that in a Christian life, God is in the driving seat. It speaks of a paradigm shift in our worldview of religion; Christ is not our tool to our own personal endeavours, rather, we are to be Christ's tool for His divine plans. So, we are to seek His will and to obey His commands. However, this posed an immediate problem for me when I first became a Christian back then: so how am I to know what is the correct thing to do, especially when the dilemmas I faced were not so clear-cut? Like for example, what course should I take for university? Should I accept the scholarship even though they did not allow me to take the course I had initially wanted? Should I continue to be so active for Dunman High Chinese Orchestra? And then, of course, a tougher one: should I continue to go to church behind my father's back, and in the process, inevitably lie to him about my whereabouts when he asks? A Christian is called to fellowship regularly (Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, Hebrews 10:25), which in today's context would mean going to church every Sunday. And yet, we are also told to "Honor (my) father and (my) mother, so that (I) may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." (Exodus 20:12). So when your father tells to you obey his order not to go to church, or have anything to do with anyone from church, or else... you are, to say the least, stuck. Especially when the 'or else' really refers to disownment. Nevertheless, the answer is actually really quite simple and obvious. Obey both commands from the bible. Go to church, admit it and then... well... face the music. That's what happened to all the martyrs during the ages of persecution: they worshipped God, breaking the law, and then did not deny the charges, thereby accepting an often gruesome and cruel death. Daniel's story also comes to mind, except, he and his friends didn't die in that furnace. God's will on many things is often very clear and leaves very little room for doubt. What usually gets in the way is our own fear of the price we have to pay. For in reality, honesty and righteousness are not rewarded terrestrially. Just look back at our NSF lives. The hardworking and honest ones get rewarded with more work and responsibilities whilst the lazy and irresponsible ones are punished with the dishonour of not being trusted to do any work at all. So we come up with excuses and lines like 'I'm not getting a clear sign... if only God would tell me in a clear audible voice what to do, I'd do it without hesitation'. What God really wants, is the decision to go to church every single week regardless of the consequences I will have to face, for a solitary Christian is usually not a Christian for very long, to convict myself to curb my ruinous addiction to gaming (not that DotA is inherently bad, but that it is to me, what 'just one pint' is to the alcoholic), to endeavour to flee from all temptations so that I can be a more 'holy' (and probably also 'boring' and 'unpopular') person; 'a general and preliminary resolution to oppose the Enemy in any mode which circumstances might show to be desirable'. And until we can follow some of His more simple and intuitive commands like the ones listed above with reliable consistency, then will He start to whisper audibly in our ears difficult and counter-intuitive commands that has turned so many lives upside down. ... So anybody got a spare room? ( 3 comment) Crying in Public Friday, April 14, 2006 6:37 PM Although I am generally loathe to make a public display of my emotions, there are inevitably times when no amount of self-control and suppression can prevent the emotions from mainfesting into beads of tears that become visible to others nearby and sometimes even end up streaking down both cheeks. Here are a few tips on what to do when such circumstances present themselves to you during the most inopportune moments. 1. Prevention is better than Cure Crying in public is usually preceeded by a moving or touching moment in a movie, among many other causes. Normally, when one is about to cry, there'd be the usual lump in the throat, a welling of pent-up emotions, or a deep depressing pain from within. If you notice these symptoms, or whatever symptoms you are familiar with that tells you that you are about to be emotionally moved beyond a certain point, then it means that you might just be in time to prevent it from happening. Start for example, by thinking about how your friends who are about to see you cry will make fun of you for the rest of your life. Detach yourself from the situation you are in, and look at yourself from a distance, and normally, that would make you stop feeling like crying, because you often start to feel silly that you are about to shed tears for something like a movie. Nevertheless, you may still catch yourself too late, and end up getting irreversibly moved and start to tear. Your eyelids feel warm, and you can feel tears brimming out of your eyes. Oh no! 2. Better late than never NEVER, never ever move your hands to your eyes before everything is under control. And never glance around to see if anyone is noticing that you're tearing. Just carry on staring right in front as if nothing has happened. Resist all urges to sniff. Blink often, because blinking does not draw immediate attention to you, and it helps to make the tears around your eyes dry up faster. Once you have it under control, then you can unobstrusively move your hand to your eye to clear whatever incriminating evidence there is that you teared. Naturally, one or two of the more irritating friends of yours will somehow notice you drying your eyes. However, they will be disappointed, because by the time they notice you, it would seem as if you were merely removing dirt from your eyes, and you would've sobered down sufficiently to be able to counter whatever taunt they throw at you. Right? Still, there is always a possibility that you somehow lost your senses and end up really crying audibly, complete with sobs and sniffs. 3. Damage Control Generally, you're screwed, but all is not lost! Now you have two choices. First, you may want to excuse yourself from everyone's sight so that you may cry your hearts out in private. The damage has been done, and your friends would've at least heard you crying for a short time so that they can jibe at you sometime in the near future. However, they probably will not see you at your ugliest if you rush off to say, the toilet fast enough, and thus they'd not be able to say very much except that you started crying. ... The other alternative, is to go all the way. Start thinking about all the saddest things that's ever happened to you. And then let loose all your emotions and cry hysterically. Chances are, if you manage to cry and sob with enough sadness and misery, and make a big enough deal out of it , your friends might be traumatised by the extent of your being affected, and perhaps decide not to ever bring this issue up to you again in case you may be offended, and may even take turns to comfort you in genuine concern. ... T_T ( 5 comment) The Sacrifice Friday, April 07, 2006 3:41 PM I taught at a nearby neighbourhood secondary school last Thursday. Landed into two Secondary 1 Normal Technical classes first thing in the morning. Things gradually improved as the day went on; I taught a Secondary 4 Normal Academic class and a Secondary 4 Express class before the day ended. The Normal Technical classes are a war zone I tell you. The school I went to actually employed 'teaching assistants' (it turns out they are old boys/girls who're waiting to go to Polytechnics for further studies) for Secondary 1 classes. And as I stepped into the first class for the day, there was a lady standing in the middle of the class struggling to say something in the sea of noise. After announcing (mainly to herself) that I was the relief teacher for today and telling the class to please give me their attention and respect, she quietly came to me and helpfully explained that 'There are a few -very- destructive elements in this class. Do not confront or challenge them if they give you trouble, just send them away to the General Office'. And then she left the class. If by destructive, she meant noisy, then the whole bloody class was extremely destructive, and yes they were giving me trouble, because I had to yell at the top of my voice before I could get their attention for a mere 3-5 seconds before I was drowned in the noise again. I wondered if I should've just sent the whole lot of them away to the General Office. And then there was the unecessary movement. At any one time, there would be at least two of them kids walking about in class or shifting their seats beside their buddies so that they could chatter away and make it even harder for me to even begin to teach them anything. And then, of course, there's the famous 'eh, 'cher, 'cher, can go toilet?'. The same kid can ask to go toilet twice or three times in two periods (1 hour), and I don't recall seeing any of them drinking any water despite their yakking away through the lesson. I later found out that they went to the toilet mainly to 'wash their hands' and at the same time, use the water in their hands to spike their hair. So once the water on their heads dried, they'd be going 'eh, 'cher, 'cher, can go toilet?' again. So there I was trying to teach them about population (the stop at 2 policy, free education, etc). I was supposed to get them to write a list of ways to increase a country's population. Immediately, shouts of 'premarital sex!' and 'don't use condoms' rang out. As I walked up to the ones who made the suggestion, they were already busily drawing pictures of condoms on the blank paper that I handed to them. Are these little monsters really only 13 years old? Then all of a sudden, I heard a few loud bangs on a desk somewhere at the back of the class. One of the teaching assistants was involved in a scuffle with one of the students. Apparently, the teaching assistant spotted him playing with his handphone, so he wanted to confiscate it. However, the student refused to hand it over. So the teaching assistant snatched the student's bag from underneath his desk, and walked out of the classroom. When I inquired as to what was going on, the teaching assistant told me that he wanted the student to go with him to the General Office. So I was like, 'Ok carry on' and continued to try to get the rest of the class to do what they were supposed to do. After another few minutes of walking around helping the students with their work, a short and stout man walked into the class in a huff, and the whole class fell dramatically into a deadly silence. It was the discipline master of the school. He entered into a tough-talking rough-sounding tirade for a good ten minutes or so. And this girl in the front row appeared to start sobbing after he mentioned something about caning. He left after threatening them to be silent for the remainder of the lesson, giving me an ambiguous pat on the back just as he passed me by. Well, the class remained relatively silent for the duration that the discipline master was lurking around the block on his rounds. Once he left the area, the noise came back. But by that time, time was almost up. ... The Secondary 4 Normal Academic class was better. They only quietly refused to do the homework they were assigned to do, quietly listened to ther discman and MP3 players while (if they were) doing their work, and quietly played with or watched movies on their handphones. All that (somewhat) innocent naughtiness has worn off by now, they've now matured into jaded disobedient punks who don't even bother to respond to your exhortations to do their work. ... At the end of the day, as I was looking through some of the work the students submitted (3 out of the 4 classes I went to were assigned work to do through me), I noticed that among the drawings of condoms and horrible handwriting and answers, there was work that was done with a genuine interest in learning. A few of the Secondary 1 students actually bothered to take down very neatly, notes of what I taught them and wrote on the board on top of finishing what I asked them to do. And as for the Secondary 4 students, some of them diligently did all their homework; the effort they put in was very obvious through what they wrote. Thus, it made me very sad to realise that such students are more or less condemned to a life with a sorry education and a bleak future. They could be late bloomers who are about to undergo an awesome intellectual awakening. Einstein was a famously late bloomer. He was so horrible in his mathematics when young, some of the mean things his teachers said about him are still being mentioned. However, the students I saw probably would never have the chance to discover any new theory in quantum physics. Heck, it'd be a miracle for them to even rise above 'normalcy' to become 'express'! The longer they stay in the normal stream, the harder it becomes for them to learn anything at all. It's a vicious cycle. Well, anyways, there's not much a relief teacher for one day can do. ( 7 comment) |
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